1. Field of the invention
The present disclosure relates to a method for electing a ring manager of ring topology network and a node, and more particularly to a method for electing a ring manager of ring topology network, configured to enhance efficiency and reliability by allowing a most appropriate node to perform a ring manager function in response to communication load of each node in a ring network using a full duplex communication method, and a node therefore.
2. Description of Related Art
If a network is configured by directly connecting a plurality of communication devices (hereinafter referred to as “nodes”) using a communication medium such as Ethernet, a failure may occur in a middle node to generate a phenomenon of interrupting communication of an entire network.
In order to prevent the phenomenon, a ring network is used capable of communicating with extra paths even if a failure occurs in the middle node.
The ring network is configured to use a full duplex communication method, where each node of the ring network can transmit packets by way of hardware logic to improve network performance. However, if the entire node is a broadcast packet of reception object, a relevant packet circulates in a limitless loop. As a measure to prevent this problem, a ring network is configured in such a manner that one or more particular nodes perform a role of a ring manager to diminish without transmission of the received packet any more.
However, there is a problem in the prior art in that the ring manager is fixed to generate an effective communication in the ring network. For example, assuming that a ring network is proposed in which nodes 1 to 10 are sequentially connected in that order, and a node 5 is selected as a ring manager.
Then, as there is realized no pack transmission in the node 5 of ring manager, such that if node 4 is to transmit a packet to node 6, the packet can be transmitted to node 6 via node 3 because transmission to node 5 cannot be realized. There is no doubt that the indirect transmission is ineffective compared with the direct transmission of packet from node 4 to node 6 via node 5, and the more packet relay counts from node 4 are, the more ineffectiveness the ring network experiences.
Particularly, the packet relay count at each node may be changed even in an operating situation, where configuration of a ring network and selection of a ring manager are completed. Therefore, even if a ring manager has been effectively selected in an initial stage of configuration of ring manager, the problem of ineffectiveness thus explained can happen at any time, if the ring manager is fixed regardless of network situation.